


To the Hammock Made of Clouds

by ParasiticEye



Category: Jack et la mécanique du cœur | Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (2013)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Depression, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Loneliness, ending spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29720310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParasiticEye/pseuds/ParasiticEye
Summary: It has been three years since the death of Jack, today is his third death anniversary. It pains Miss Acacia to think that his death anniversary even exists.
Relationships: Jack/Acacia





	To the Hammock Made of Clouds

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, okay, so originally the film was part of our discussion in class, and I accidentally fell inlove with it. As a post-activity, we had to write our version of what we think would happen in the sequel, and this is my version. Now I'm not the best writer, but I hope I got the idea across heh. 
> 
> Acacia-centric, because I found her ability to float and to grow rose vines very interesting.

It has been three years since the death of Jack, today is his third death anniversary. It pains Miss Acacia to think that his death anniversary even exists. It pains her to be here, at the "haunted" hill of the late witch Madeleine, under a dead tree where the makeshift tombs of Miss Madeleine and her adopted son are buried. This was the tree in which they had their first kiss.  
  
The sweet kiss of death.

It wasn't only Jack who died there and then; it was as soon Acacia felt the coldness on his lips did she pull away, and her soul followed Jack to the heavens, leaving a shell of a beautiful girl to wander the earth endless and alone. She was as still as the frozen corpse of her lover, giving in to the unforgiving cold that birthed and killed him. When the winter breeze gusted, she could not feel her skin. She couldn't feel so much that she didn't know that she was already floating in the air, up toward the sky, until Anna and Luna were grabbing her feet and pulling her back down. Acacia would say it was unfortunate that Anna and Luna had rescued her. In fact, she did not feel rescued at all, but rather made into a prisoner of earth. She knows they mean well, but when they grasped her ankles, she only felt shackles. As if they were gravity, a boundary pulling her away from Jack again.

Why must they always be apart? Why must there be people pulling them apart?

Anna and Luna frantically ran them inside the house. Acacia could not hear them, only muffled shaking voices as they carried her and Jack. She could not feel the warmth of Anna's arms, only the cold, only the gravity pulling her down, down, down. Even as they went inside the house, even as Jack was warmed by the fireplace, he was still cold. He was pale, his eyes shut close.

He was dead.

Acacia carried the burden of staying alive for the sake of living for him. That's what Jack would've wanted, right? But how long can she live on like this?

The very next day of his death, Acacia woke up from the restless sleep, feeling vines slowly creep up on her arms. The wrong thing about it was that she couldn't make it retract. All her life, her thorns protected her. It was her defense mechanism. Bullies in her previous schools dared not to touch her because her thorns hurt them, and though she did not wish to harm anyone, she was glad for its protection. Now it seems to have a life of its own. Since then, she had vines over her arms. The thorns were still small then, only pricking her like an ant bite. Over the years, it grew over her chest, then around her torso, putting weight on her hair as it began to bundle up. She could not remove the roses on her head anymore, she can't stop them from growing. 

One day in Spring, Joe had found her once more. Acacia was awake early that morning, there was a hesitant knock on the door. She had to put her glasses on as she answered to it. _He_ was by the doorway, a bouquet of fresh native flowers of Edinburgh in his hand. He had a joyous glint in his eyes, all for awe of her beauty and for victory. He had an aura of self-claimed triumph emanating around him, telling her as if he'd won the rivalry between him and Jack. Acacia had never felt disgusted - he dared to step on the grounds of her lover's home, he dared to woo her after making her lover's life miserable, after trying to break them up again at their reunion, and now he dared to bring her flowers.

Flowers, though not the same kind on her head, whose thorns were tearing her skin ever since Jack's death. Flowers that she had gather and place on Jack's tomb every day.

And he dared to win her back with _that._

On that very spot, the stems and thorns grew longer. Roses bloomed more buds out of her control. Joe tried to reach her, but like with every bully she had in her life, her thorns pricked him when he touched her. Now he could not - not now or ever. For once this year, Acacia felt grateful for the thorns. Acacia made sure he never returned.

That day, she felt so much emotion she never had in so long, and above amongst them is hate. She could not control throwing her glasses away, breaking them into the wall. Then everything is a blur, and it was _so much better._ If she was living without Jack, she'd rather not see at all.

After two years, Anna and Luna noticed her roses were growing more dangerous and harmful to her. Acacia could not hide the bleeding of her skin anymore, because the thorns pierced deeper and she bled more. It worried the girls, so they suggested she moves away from the house and from the grave for a while, just to get through her grief. Miss Acacia agreed, and so she moved away to the nearby town. The two, and Arthur when he is able, visited her from time to time. She had to put up her fakest smile to make them go away. They already lost two members of their strange little family, they have their grief and she has hers. What good would it do anyway to burden them with hers?

She worked as a street performer just as she did before. Some days, she would perform on the plaza where she first met Jack, though she knew it was regressing her progress of moving on. Though she could not see her audience, she felt the pity of their eyes and heard the hushed whispers of worry as she sings their song. It was once romantic, now it's melancholic as she sings alone. She hoped deep in her heart that the notes would reach the sky, to Jack, and he would sing the melody back to her.

She can't help but think what could've happened if she never moved back to Spain, that she stayed there and their love blossomed early. They would then have all the time in the world. Perhaps she could've even prevented Joe from bullying Jack and leading everything to all this...

The more days flew by, the more she saw senselessness in living, and the more the thorns grew. It's just so lonely, but all she could do is curl up on the bed and live in the past memories. If Jack were here, the walls would not be so grey, and her bed won't be so cold. She spent most of her days inside her room, lying still on the bed, letting the stems crawl and slowly root themselves. If Acacia never moved a muscle, the roses can trap her in the bed forever. Though sometimes she wished it would, she reminds herself every day that it wasn't what Jack would've wanted for her.

Jack would've reminded her every day to put on her glasses, as she often forgets. She preferred life in a blur, she could perform better without seeing the glaring of the audience. And she was so glad that whenever Jack was with her, he was always close enough that she could make out his beautiful ginger hair and his soft green eyes. When he lets out a lover's sigh and flashes a gentle smile, it was all for her to see.

It was not a blur, because he was always so close. It was as if she could only see him and blur the rest of the world. No one else could do that. 

Upon moving away from the house, there was one thing Acacia noticed that was different: one of her roses wilted. It has never happened before, her mother told her she was born with a rosebud on her head, and it grew as she grew, and it has never wilted.

Now, it's the third year. The third death anniversary.

She came back to the house because she could not perform anymore due to the loss of passion and the loss of her beauty. More of her roses died, she was looking terribly grey and dreary. Whenever she walked out of the street, the townspeople feared her for she looked as if a walking rotting corpse. Her skin is pale, darkening veins visible, and her whole body covered in roses, thorns, and lively vines. She walked in a crooked gait, as the thorns pricked her every movement. She found it hard to breathe, to walk, to feel. 

Now here she was, in front of Jack's grave once more in the dead of the winter. The snow absorbed her trail of blood droplets. Thorns are consuming her, all of her roses have died, save for one - the biggest one on her head. It was a poetic parallel, that Jack had a cuckoo clock for a heart to live on, and Acacia had a rose on her head that once wilted, so will she.

Acacia laid back to the old tree. The thorns pierced her back, her blood watered the dead tree. Her vines slowly found comfort in rooting themselves around the bark of the tree. For the last time, she reminisces their short time together, the sweet memories that seem like a distant dream. Ah, all this daydreaming is making her float again, she wondered if she would reach heaven this time. But the vines tugged her back as if it were a leash. It's not to anchor her to earth, but to remind her she has to leave the weight behind to be able to float to the sky.

To the sky, where all the stars she saw when she fell in love with Jack reside.

To the sky, to the hammock made of clouds.


End file.
